Overview
The authors bought unrecorded (informally produced) grain spirit from small producers and vendors in several Chinese provinces, plus a few recorded commercial spirits, and tested ethanol, volatile compounds and arsenic, cadmium and lead against the AMPHORA safety guideline. Most samples met the guideline. The paper prints only one metal concentration in the main text; per-sample values are in a supplement.
Key numbers
- Arsenic: one unrecorded sample contained 113 µg/L, above the 100 µg/L AMPHORA limit (Section 3.2.7).
- Detection counts across 63 samples: arsenic in 29 (46.0%), cadmium in 47 (74.6%), lead in 38 (60.3%) (Section 3.2.7).
- All lead and cadmium values were below the AMPHORA limits of 200 µg/L and 10 µg/L (Section 3.2.7).
Methods (brief)
Nineteen milliliters of spirit plus nitric acid were heated to drive off alcohol and water, made up to 20 mL and analyzed by ICP-OES (Appendix A). Calibration used national standard solutions. No detection limits, reference materials or recoveries are reported.
Evidence Fitness
Sixty-three samples, but the metal concentrations themselves are only in an unavailable supplementary table, so the paper supplies one arsenic value and detection rates. ICP-OES is relatively insensitive for these metals and no limits are given. The work was funded in part by an alcohol-industry alliance. Grain spirit is a proxy for whiskey and does not measure it.
Related evidence
Update history
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